


Bibliophilia ~ A Fleeting Nostalgia

by Darkbeetlebot



Category: Touhou Project
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Future, Amnesia, Bad Ending, Books, Dementia, Depressing, End of the World, Everyone is Dead, Far Future, Future Fic, Immortality, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Metaphors, Nostalgia, One Shot, Past Character Death, Post-Apocalypse, Post-Canon, Sad, Short, Short One Shot, Symbolism, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-12
Updated: 2018-08-12
Packaged: 2019-06-26 06:31:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15657696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Darkbeetlebot/pseuds/Darkbeetlebot
Summary: After everything has ended, what will be remembered?This was written back in 2016, but I never posted it --- until now.





	Bibliophilia ~ A Fleeting Nostalgia

"How long has it been? It seems like only a day or two passed by. Yet, everything looks so different from yesterday."

Yes, it was. So far gone, so into ruin, the land she calls home became a wasteland. That tall and proud building stands now amongst its own rubble.

"Oh, it's raining again. I thought that couldn't happen anymore."

Indeed, it was. The steam rising from the rain as it pelted her body created a thick, opaque haze from the sheer mass of it, and to think it started so suddenly. It would only last for one fleeting moment, however, leaving her life itself soaked and destroyed in a single fell swoop.

"I see. This is the last one, I suppose." She grasps one tome in both hands, having protected it from being doused. By now, she no longer cared about the others, which had been explored too thoroughly for mere men to understand the value of.

Instead of opening it, she looked towards the sky and around her: at the once expansive forests that now lie malnourished, as the land itself was no longer fertile; at the lake that was once perpetually covered in fog like a crystalline majesty of blue, but now remained empty; at a mountain still standing tall and proud with nothing dwelling within it to call it God; and to the rubble of civilization that was adored once upon a time as a beacon of hope.

Her body lights up, its flesh having been replaced long ago with the very essence of nature itself; a white, crackling light vilified by what it touches. The life signature is missing, the form shapeless and all-consuming.

Her once vast archives now lie in the rain and wait to be reanalyzed or destroyed, as have thousands before them. The acid that pours from the sky tears the dreams that they give asunder, an inferno that covers all land under its foot in decimation.

And she thinks, "What happened?"

They once had everything, and then it vanished. Now all that stands is one, in the center of a nothingness while the once chipper star above destroys everything while being blotted out by the tar-black skies. It leads her to the question, "Who was I?"

Nothing is there to answer the question, left to pondering and to be forgotten moments after. With nothing left to stare at on the horizon, no recollection of oneself, she glances down at the final tome of time and spies the spine where it tells, "...Knowledge"

"That must have been a wonderful person." she believes, and opens the tome. There she sits in the old world for the rest of time, with only one tale left, and that of her own making. The final words spoken, "There must be some things only words can explain..." reverberate until the end for any who hear it. Perhaps it was not important; the only one that could hear it could not understand it. Everything at once came together, and there were no more words.


End file.
